The Origins of Informality in a Brazilian Planned City: Belo Horizonte, 1889-1900

Abstract

Sixty years before Brasília, Belo Horizonte was constructed as Brazil’s first modern planned city (1894-1897). This article focuses on the role of land development in shaping inequality in Belo Horizonte, the first of four major planned cities in Brazil. In Belo Horizonte, political backers and urban planners viewed controlled land development as providing a clean break with the past and creating an industrial, Eurocentric modern future in the wake of the abolition of slavery (1888) and the end of Brazil’s post-independence empire (1889). This article argues that more so than the architecture of its buildings or its urban plan, Belo Horizonte modeled an “architecture of capital” in which creating an urban property market both emerged from and was tasked with producing the city’s racialized narrative of modernity and progress. Belo Horizonte’s emphasis on land speculation gave rise to one of Brazil’s first favelas, comprised of the workers tasked with constructing the city.